


Whiskey and Wishful Thinking

by Akingrecitinghamlet



Category: Frontier (TV 2016)
Genre: I'll earn that rating eventually I promise, M/M, Sobbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 16:26:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18472681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akingrecitinghamlet/pseuds/Akingrecitinghamlet
Summary: Samuel Grant and Cobbs Pond, finally alone, have a brief discussion about Pond's unsavory past.





	Whiskey and Wishful Thinking

**Author's Note:**

> This is a brief introduction to a longer and very explicit fic I've been working on for a while, and since I wanted to at least post the first chapter this weekend, here it is! I kept editing and reediting it in desperation, but sometimes you just have to throw your hands up and post things at midnight, no? The second chapter should be up shortly, as soon as possible, but even though the exciting part is not included yet I wanted to stay true to my word. Thank you guys so much for your support- if anyone has any adult-themed request they'd like to see in the next chapter or in general please let me know! I absolutely adore requests of any kind too, fluff or dark or adult or otherwise.   
> Thank you all for your patience and support! You all keep me writing even when I feel like I can't, and for that I say thank you!

“Is it true?” He asks one evening, after too much firelight glow and whiskey. “Did you really do all the things they said you did?”

  The room is full of shadows. They dance up the walls, spidery and fragile. Cobbs Pond stirs in his seat as if preening his feathers, flattered and nervous, as if basking in the glow of Samuel Grant's attention is good, and having his reputation recognized is better, but he's afraid being happy will come off all wrong. 

   Grant is too drunk to really consider what it means when Pond delicately squirms for a moment like a complemented church girl playing with her petticoats. It's fine to watch, though- Pond's delicate movements are hypnotic at best, and his legs flash in and out of the dappled light in a way that makes him half consider something. Something warm and strange slips into the back of his mind and sits there, fat and heavy and patient, waiting to be examined. Samuel dismisses it to the banishment of his sober hours- let the man who does deals cut his teeth on that. Samuel Grant this evening is in a good mood, and intends to stay tipsy in it.

  “What do you think?” Pond coos softly. His face is a shy, delicious little smile. His eyes are bright with fear. This Grant notices.

  “I think it's fairly possible.” Samuel smiles and leans back and hopes it all looks very nonchalant. Cobbs Pond is afraid of his reproach. It's a revelation. Don't think, he cautions himself, don't think about this now. Sober Samuel will sort through the wreckage. 

  Cobbs giggles. It's a soft sound, and it reminds him of small birds chirping. It's embarrassingly genuine. 

   They're alone, Samuel thinks, for possibly the first time he can remember, and if the rumors are right it should make him feel scared. Maybe he is? Is that strange feeling fear? He might simply be too drunk to tell. He hadn't though he'd had enough for it, but perhaps he'd forgotten.

  “Mr. Grant, you are too kind.” Cobbs says 'Mr. Grant’ with strange emphasis, as if he enjoys pronouncing it. “And if I did?”

  “Did what?”

  “Do everything they say I did.”

  It's the way he says it. Not like a man who would be proud and boastful, or like a man concerned for guilt- he speaks it in an even way. But it's the tone, writhing with implication. Samuel half expects him to bite his bottom lip.

  It's the strangest conversation he can ever remember having. 

  “Well, I suppose I wouldn't be surprised,” He says, and it comes out so much more suave than he expected, sounding rich like honey. He watches his words fall over Cobbs Pond, and the effect is apparently physical. He says it as a joke, but it doesn't come out a joke- “What's a man like you to do, anyhow?”

  “A man like me?” Pond savors it, tasting the words in his mouth with obvious pleasure. 

  “Yes, a man like you.”

  “And what does Samuel Grant make of a man like me?” He settles into his chair a little, leaning a bit sideways. There's something in the way he crosses his legs that begs for them to be pulled apart. His eyes glint in the warm semi-darkness. Their furtive, darting glances make contact for an instant and it lasts for what feels like years. 

  Grant adjusts. He leans forward in his chair. He places one elbow down on his knee. He lets an easy smile cross his face and Cobb's Pond's eerie little grin looks charmed.

  “I could make much of a man like you.” He says and the words sound soft in all the brief distance between them, though he says them darkly and the flickering shadows on the walls leap in subtle agreement. They could still be talking business, Grant reasons, though Pond knows they're not.

  Grant knows that Pond knows they're not because of the way he says 'Mr. Grant’, in a strange little sigh that is at once wistful and admiring and not at all hesitant. 

  “Mr. Grant,” He begins, and he leans in a little now too, his body all long shifting limbs in the firelight. 

  “Please, call me Samuel.”

  Pond's eyes soften and the hunger in them deepens. Samuel Grant has never seen an animal in the wild wear that expression. 

  “Samuel,” He wraps his lips around it carefully, as if it is something he might break. It's a gorgeous noise in his mouth. Samuel feels it summon something in him. “I think I would like to see that.”

  “See what?”

  “See what you could make of me.” The long, languid blinking Pond does is to drink Samuel in, but it has the added effect of drawing attention to his eyelashes. Samuel tries not to think about his eyelashes, or the newly-exposed space between his uncrossed legs, which lies there if he would care to glance downward like the bared neck of an unknown beast twisting itself in some primal ritual of admittance.

   “In an evening?” He couples it with a laugh, in case he is wrong. In case it is all whiskey and wishful thinking.

   “Oh, I’m sure Samuel Grant could make much of me in an evening.” Cobbs Pond's voice is sweet like rosewater and his grin has grown bolder. 

   “Might have to be more than one evening.” Samuel murmurs, and there's something like hope in Pond's eyes.

   “Certainly.”


End file.
